This Pulse of Spirit article is an expression of the One Faith we share in common as humankind. This is the One Faith in life itself, in Creation and the process of Creation. It is the One faith in the Creator and the One Faith in ourselves as an expression and embodiment of the Creator on earth—each of us unique and yet one. One Faith, one people, one planet, one love throughout the world. We, who publish the Pulse of Spirit, devote ourselves to the One Faith behind all faiths, without which any faith fails us and without which we live small, fearful lives.

The torus is the shape of Creation from the atom to galaxies to the energetic flow of the human experience. Depicted graphically, it looks like a donut with an energetic flow from its hole around the donut itself and back to the hole. In this Pulse of Spirit, I invite you to a meditation on that flow as it pertains to you and the world in which you live.

The last chapter of the last book in the Old Testament, the Book of Malachi, speaks of the Sun of righteousness arising with healing in his wings. Having just passed through the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, it is particularly timely to read these words. But the solar event is not just something happening outside ourselves. There is a solar event within us—the Sun of righteousness is arising within us, with healing in his wings. What a beautiful image! I read a biblical scholar who said that in Hebrew, the word sun is feminine, so that the phrase might be translated, “the Sun of righteousness arises with healing in her wings.” It rings true either way.

Here is a piece of sacred scripture that has been used by two of the great faiths of our contemporary culture—by the Jewish faith and by the Christian faith. Probably most Christians and Jewish people have hardly noticed this teaching from Malachi. But it is interesting how these symbolic words create an allegory for a human reality. Of course, the allegory only works if you understand that the symbols of the teaching are not only something of themselves but a representation of something beyond the words.

The Sun of righteousness… A Christian might say, “Well, that is Jesus.” But it is spelled s-u-n. Somebody else might say, “It is a reference to the sun in the solar system,” and it is. But still, since when did the sun rise with healing in its wings?

Here is an allegory and a pattern of symbology to tell us something of Reality. We can embrace it with fervor as religious text as a part of a religious dogma. Or we can reject it because we see it that way. In both cases, we miss the point. And here we have, right in front of us, hiding in plain sight, a truth of our reality to explore.

So what does the Sun, which Malachi refers to, symbolize? Clearly, it is the source of healing, the source of wholeness. It is the fiery source of Love at the core of our being.

I would like to introduce another word for our spiritual origin. It is another word that is a symbol of something, Father. Our Father, who art in heaven… The word might evoke images of Father God with a gray beard, up in the clouds, the Father in heaven. Obviously, this Father is not an earthly father—and, you might say, not really a father at all, except symbolically. It is the origin of our human experience.  

In both Hebrew and Aramaic, the word father is abba. And like an earthly father, the heavenly Father lends his DNA—except this is spiritual DNA. Our heavenly Father holds the pattern of our reality which is the origin of our life. Our heavenly Father surrounds us with love and gives to us the seeds of love he plants in our soul to sprout, to grow, and become an expression of the reality of love in the world through us as a human being. Very much like a true father. But not an earthly father, a reality to experience.

When we learn to let symbols of reality acquaint us with something we have not been fully aware of, they can connect us profoundly with Reality—if they are true symbols. Here, the Father. The Sun. The healing wings of the Sun.

If there is a father, there is a child. Recently, I’ve come across a power song from Jonathan David and Melissa Helser. It is from the Christian faith. The title of the song is “No Longer Slaves.” It contains this line.

I am a child of God.

Of course, we are not literally a child of God, not in the sense of being an earthly child, any more than the Heavenly Father is a dad. But we are born from an invisible reality—at least it was invisible until we came along. We are born of the Father, a reality within us, above us, or whatever preposition you want to use. I am a human being of an origin of a place that is not simply earthly—a child of God, a child of love, a child of the Father, a child of my Father. I have his spiritual DNA.

The song goes on to say this:

 I am surrounded by the arms of the Father.

Sounds like the healing wings, does it not? I am surrounded by the arms of the Father. Not a literal father—surrounded by the arms of love.

This song is Christian, but for me and perhaps for you, it is transcendent Christian, not dogmatically Christian. It’s joyful to use the symbology of the Christian faith to experience what that symbology was originally intended to acquaint us with so that we might know it intimately.

Symbology can be so beautiful when we get comfortable with it, when we realize that that is what it is, and it is connecting us to a reality. We could say many things about who we are. We could characterize it in many ways and use many symbols for it. So I don’t want to limit us in any way. But there is an aspect of us that is a child of God, and it is a beautiful way to name this element of what it is to be a human being. I am a child of my Father. I am a son of my Father. We all have earthly fathers. I am Al’s son, in my case, and proud to be. But that is, of course, not what I am talking about. I am born of an ever-present intrinsic reality, and I live my life in communion with that reality, as an expression of that reality, as a child of that reality. Proudly so. Humbly so. I believe that is the truth of all of us.

There is humility, praise, and surrender to that experience of knowing oneself as a child of God. Christian is certainly not the only faith that evokes this. The very word Islam means surrender. In the prayer of many faiths, we acknowledge the Father, what is higher. It is intrinsic to the One Faith and to all faiths—praise for the Divine, above us, within us, and in all things. When we have a mental attitude and posture of praise, even a physical posture of praise, and a heart filled with praise, there is an ascension of spiritual current. It rises up through us into the invisible.

One of the great tragedies of the loss of spirituality in the Western world is that we come to believe that we have nothing to give to the Father, nothing to give to the Divine that would be of any value—that our praise and our love and our thanksgiving does not mean anything. That when we say thank you, he does not hear. The truth is he hears our words and receives our praise as the rising incense of love from us as a child of his. And that rising substance touches his heart and enters his being, and is always received. It is always welcomed when it is given. We have only to give it.

That line from the song, I am a child of God, is an acknowledgment of our origin. Well, that is a good place to start. Certainly, we did not make ourselves. We might have worked on our development, but ultimately it is the Father, the power from within, his life, and his will that grows us. I am a child of God.

Something else happens when there is that ascension of substance. I am surrounded by the arms of the Father. The Father does not just take without giving. This is not a one-way relationship, either way. We are not here to sacrifice for God, surrender for God, live a painful life for God, or grudgingly give him gifts and get nothing back. We have already received something, and the more that we offer, the more there is reciprocity—not because of some religious law, but because of the very nature of Reality. So there is this flow of the torus. When there is rising energy within us that ascends to the Father, then in the flow of the torus, the arms of the Father come around us and surround us. Those arms are the literal flow of energy that pours down around us and holds us safe in a loving embrace. Can you feel the reality of that? We say the arms of the Father. That is what was in the song. They are not really arms; he is not really our father. But in that beautiful symbology, we get in touch with the reality of this flow of the torus. That’s why when we hear the lines to that song, they seem so real. When we surrender and offer up the flow of ascending substance to the Father, the flow of torus continues, it comes down around us from above, and we know that the arms of the Father surround us.

The Sun of righteousness arises with healing in his wings. The arms of the Father are the same as the healing wings. They bring a radiance that surrounds us and emanates from us, and ultimately returns to us in the flow of the torus. This is the radiant hedge within which we live, made real because these are living symbols of the reality of what it means to be a human being.

Here is the living temple, this globe of circulating energy. It circulates because, at every point along the way, we allow it to. We do not take the mental attitude that we are here all by ourselves, that we made ourselves, that we are living some kind of separate life, alienated from the very source of our Being, which is the source of all things. It is a fountain within us. And so we are connecting, offering up our love and our praise. How great Thou art, how wonderful, how strong and true, how full of light and power. How beautiful is the source of our Being! And in that uplifting substance of praise, the Father hears our voice, he hears our prayer of thanksgiving and immediately showers down upon us his Holy Spirit, his healing wings, his surrounding arms.

We are a child of God. But we are not only a child of God—I am a man of God. You are a man or a woman of God. We become spiritually mature, not only looking for nourishment and protection and healing for ourselves. We become a living expression of what made us. We become a living embodiment of that power, that love, that light, that truth. Another book of the Old Testament says this:

The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. (Habakkuk 2:20)

Knowing ourselves as the Lord of our being, we are in our holy temple, the temple of the living God. It is not a temple of stone but a temple of living flesh, a temple of the torus, a temple of constant surrender and praise; a temple surrounded by the healing wings of the Sun.